"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step": An Asian American perspective on mentoring in neuropsychology.

OBJECTIVE: The Asian Neuropsychological Association (ANA) is a recently established cultural identity-based organization with the mission to ensure accessibility and provision of culturally sensitive neuropsychological services for individuals of Asian descent. One of ANA's programmatic goals has been to foster a pipeline of neuropsychologists through mentoring and networking. In this paper, we aim to understand the historical context as well as unique considerations that are relevant for mentoring in the Asian American community. METHODS: A search of the existing literature in psychology and allied fields such as counseling and sociology was conducted to identify and formulate suggestions for mentoring culturally diverse communities, with a specific focus on Asian Americans. Firsthand narrative descriptions of effective examples of mentoring experiences in the context of shared values are discussed. FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS: This paper reviews the historical context and establishes an initial contextual foundation for increasing knowledge about best practices that can be used to establish effective mentoring relationships for Asian Americans. Six key considerations were identified: model minority myth, acculturation and enculturation, ethno-racial status and gender, the context of communication, quantity and quality of mentorship, and unique values specific to the Asian American community. Our findings identify the value of cultural identity-based organizations in creating communities that can support the professional development of future neuropsychologists at various career stages. Overall, findings have implications for maintaining the relevance of the field of neuropsychology in adequately serving an increasingly culturally diverse national and international population.

Differential prefrontal cortex activation during inhibitory control in adolescents with and without childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

The authors examined inhibitory control processes in 8 adolescents diagnosed with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) during childhood and in 8 adolescent control participants using functional MRI with the Stimulus and Response Conflict Tasks (K. W. Nassauer & J. M. Halperin, 2003). No group differences in performance were evident on measures of interference control and/or response competition created by location and direction stimuli. However, the ADHD group demonstrated significantly greater activation of the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex during interference control as well as greater activation of the left anterior cingulate cortex, right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and left basal ganglia during the dual task of interference control and response competition. The magnitude of the prefrontal and basal ganglia activation was positively correlated with severity of ADHD. Response competition alone did not yield group differences in activation.

Response inhibition in adolescents diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder during childhood: an event-related FMRI study.

OBJECTIVE: Frontostriatal neural abnormalities have been implicated in the response inhibition impairments that are characteristic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, reports of such abnormalities in adolescents are inconsistent. The present study used behavioral and functional neuroimaging techniques to examine inhibitory control processes in adolescents who had been diagnosed with ADHD during childhood. METHOD: The authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during performance of a Go/No-Go task to scan 10 male adolescents who were diagnosed with DSM-III-R ADHD when they were 7 to 11 years old and nine age-, sex-, and IQ-matched comparison subjects with no history of ADHD. Response inhibition was tested by contrasting neural activation during No-Go trials with that during Go trials. RESULTS: The inhibition of a prepotent tendency to respond produced markedly greater activation of the left anterior cingulate gyrus, bilateral frontopolar regions, bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and left medial frontal gyrus in the adolescents with childhood ADHD than in the adolescents with no history of ADHD. Activity in the first two regions was inversely related to task performance across the study group. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with adolescents who had no history of ADHD, adolescents who were diagnosed with ADHD during childhood exhibited enhanced responses during inhibition in ventrolateral prefrontal cortical areas that subserve response inhibition, as well as in anterior cingulate and frontopolar regions implicated in other executive functions.

Longitudinal cognitive follow-up in low grade gliomas.

Background In patients with low-grade glioma (LGG), the tumor and its treatment with conformal radiation therapy (RT) and chemotherapy can disrupt cognitive function. However, the contribution of disease and treatment to long-term cognitive outcome remains to be elucidated. In this study, we performed longitudinal cognitive follow-up in a subgroup of patients who received RT, chemotherapy, or no treatment. Methods Twenty-five LGG patients underwent neuropsychological evaluations at study entry, and 6 and 12 months subsequently; 9 patients had RT +/- chemotherapy prior to enrollment and 16 had no treatment. Results At the initial evaluation, treated patients had impaired performance on motor speed only, but scored 1 standard deviation below normative values on tests of executive functions; untreated patients had no cognitive impairment. Repeated measures analyses of variance showed a significant variation over time (P = 0.03) in nonverbal memory (delayed recall); treated patients' performance improved at the 6-month follow-up to a level comparable to untreated patients, but both groups declined slightly by the 12-month evaluation. In a subset of patients (N = 16) available for an additional cognitive evaluation, significant changes between the 12-month and the long-term follow-up were seen in phonemic verbal fluency, mood and quality of life; untreated patients seen at short intervals improved slightly while treated patients seen at longer intervals declined. Conclusions Longitudinal follow-up showed that both disease duration and treatment with RT +/- chemotherapy contributed to a mild decrement in nonverbal recall and in some aspects of executive functions and quality of life in this group of LGG patients.

The relationship of behavioral inhibition to executive functions in young adults.

Barkley's hybrid model of executive functions (EFs) predicts that individuals with deficient inhibitory control should show impairment of EFs. Thirty-eight nonreferred young adults were administered tests of EFs and four laboratory measures of inhibitory control: Stop Signal (SS), Go No-Go, Competing Motor Program (CMP), and Stroop Color-Word tests. Behavioral ratings of impulsivity were collected using the Barratt Impulsivity Scale-11 (BIS-11). CMP and SS accounted for a significant proportion of variance in measures of EFs beyond that accounted for by IQ. Additionally, increased impulsivity, as measured by the BIS-11, was associated with poorer performance on some tests of EFs. These findings provide partial support for Barkley's theory in that effective executive functioning is associated with sufficient inhibitory control.